Manufacturing sales answers and calculators

Direct answers to the questions people ask about manufacturing sales, each with its number in the first sentence, a table and how it was measured. All of them come from the 2026 study: 1,271 U.S. manufacturing quotes, 268 purchase orders and $127.3M quoted, November 2025 – October 2026.

Answers

• What is the average quote-to-PO conversion rate in manufacturing?
  About 21% of manufacturing quotes become purchase orders: 268 of 1,271 U.S. quotes in the 12 months to October 2026 (21.1%), up from 14% a year earlier.
• What is a good cold-call answer rate for B2B and manufacturing prospects?
  In this data the answer rate was 7.7%: of 439,358 prospecting calls to manufacturers in the 12 months to October 2026, 33,856 were answered, about 1 in 13 dials.
• How many touches does it take to get a quote from a manufacturer?
  834 calls and emails per quote: 439,358 calls and 621,119 emails over the 12 months to October 2026 produced 1,271 manufacturing quotes.
• What share of manufacturing quotes come from email?
  82%: email sequences were the lead source of 1,046 of 1,271 U.S. manufacturing quotes in the 12 months to October 2026, and of 221 of 268 purchase orders.
• What is the average manufacturing quote size?
  The average U.S. manufacturing quote was $137K in the 12 months to October 2026, but the median, the typical quote, was $12K, up from $8K a year earlier.
• Are RFQs to manufacturers rising or falling in 2026?
  Falling in number: U.S. manufacturing quotes fell 30% in the 12 months to October 2026, from 1,812 to 1,271, while quoted value held at $127.3M (−2%).
• Which U.S. states convert manufacturing quotes into purchase orders best?
  Ohio and Michigan: 35% of their manufacturing quotes became purchase orders in the 12 months to October 2026, against 21% nationally, and the Midwest as a region converted 28%.
• Which manufacturing industries send the most RFQs?
  Machinery: 121 of the 1,271 U.S. manufacturing quotes in the 12 months to October 2026, ahead of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering (82) and Electrical & Electronic (50).

Calculators

• Prospecting calculator
  How many calls and emails do I need for N quotes or M purchase orders?
• Quote pipeline calculator
  Quotes × conversion rate × typical quote value = expected purchase-order value.

Glossary

• RFQ (request for quote)
• Quote-to-PO rate
• Purchase order (PO)
• NAICS vs SIC codes
• Sales development vs business development
• Touches per quote
• All terms

More: all findings · Manufacturing Sales Statistics 2026: 40+ Data Points · the data as CSV

Read the full 43-page studyDownload the PDF

Factur runs outbound prospecting for U.S. manufacturers · facturmfg.com · More free data on U.S. companies by state: Insights